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Justice Index Launched at Cardozo Law

New metrics show disparities in number of attorneys for people in poverty,support for people with limited English proficiency, access to justice for peoplewith disabilities, and help for people proceeding without lawyers

New York, NY, February 26, 2014 – The National Center for Access to Justice(NCAJ) today announced the launch of the Justice Index – its new online tool whichcompares the quality of access to justice in statewide justice systems. The JusticeIndex is the first of its kind, which uses cutting edge interactive map technology toshow the geographical distribution of access to justice across the US.

In its first installment, the Justice Index presents data in four categories reflectingkey elements of access to justice in statewide justice systems, including: i) thenumber of attorneys for people in poverty; ii) the amount of support for people withlimited English proficiency; iii) access for people with disabilities; and iv) help forpeople proceeding without lawyers.

The Justice Index presents specific new findings on access to justice in the states,including the following key findings:

• Some states have fewer than one civil legal aid attorney per 10,000 peoplewho are poor while there are 40 attorneys for every 10,000 people across thenation.• 24 percent of states do not have a rule authorizing court clerks to provideinformational assistance to people who have no lawyers.• 45 percent of state judiciary web sites do not provide information in anylanguage other than English.• 25 percent of the states don’t yet assure quality by using languageinterpreters that are “certified.”• 22% of states allow judges to charge a deaf or hearing impaired person forthe cost of a sign language interpreter.• 47 percent of states do not authorize judges to take steps to ensure thatunrepresented individuals are fairly heard.

The Justice Index also provides two types of overall scores allowing comparisons of

states to one another: i) a composite score shows the overall performance of each

state in all categories of data combined; ii) a categorical score shows the overall

performance of each state in each individual category.

“The Justice Index promotes data-driven conversation on how best to deliver on one

of the core promises we all make to each other as Americans: that everyone must be

equal before the law,” said David Udell, Executive director of NCAJ. “One of our main

goals of the index is to start the conversation about where best practices are in place

or needed in our state justice systems.”

The Pro Bono Effort that Created the Justice Index

NCAJ is guiding the development of the Justice Index as part of an unprecedented

collaboration among multiple pro bono supporters.

• The Pfizer Legal Alliance (PLA) led the research for the Justice Index.

• A team of 10 attorneys and staff from Skadden Arps (a PLA firm) carried out

the research to produce the first installment of the Justice Index.

• Additionally, teams of law students from Cardozo School of Law and

Pennsylvania School of Law contributed to the research.

• UBS also helped to carry out the research for the Justice Index.

• Deloitte analyzed the data, calculated the indices, and deployed the latest

visualization tools to display the results in the Justice Index.

• MSDS, the NYC based web design firm, built the Justice Index web site that

houses the data, making it available to the public.

“The PLA is taking part in this signature project to help realize the NCAJ’s vision of

both discovering the degree to which our country assures access to justice and